FOOT VILLAGE / SUPER KHOUMEISSA split 12"

A single 16-minute-long piece, Foot Village describe ‘Bebongs…’ as being "about being young and listening to records in the middle of the night with your friends; the type of experience that creates ineffable bonds of friendship while on psychic journeys." These types of experience were vital to all the group's members, translating “into the feeling we get when playing our drums, deep and lost in the sound. With ‘Bebongs’ we wanted to create an epic journey through, as the lyrics note, ‘the door that can never be seen’". A song with many unexpected movements and lyrics that swing from silly and fun to the deadly serious, ‘Bebongs’ is an explosive song embracing infinite possibilities and transcending the band’s simple set up of just drums, voices, and one megaphone. Beginning with a humble swirl of sounds laying out the pallet, the tools for such travel, it opens in a tumbling, freeform clatter before cohering into a beat and gear-shifting through different stages. By the end these sounds have come together in a literal opera, “a place we challenged ourselves to go beyond anywhere any Foot Village song has taken us."

Occupying the other side, Super Khoumeissa is a group of six musicians and four dancers from Gao, on the banks of the Niger River in the North of Mali, 320 km east of Timbuktu. Whilst the group has been active (with changing personnel) since at least 1990, this is their first official release. Super Khoumeissa are the premier representatives of the most widespread musical style in Northern Mali – Takamba, which denotes both a musical structure and a dance. The group play traditional three-stringed instruments known as the Tehardent or Ngoni which are amplified to both augment and distort the sound and the traditional gourd percussion instrument known as the Calabasse. This combination produces a dynamic sound that can instantly captivate a crowd. With Takamba bands frequently found playing at weddings and other celebrations, the dance includes graceful and subtle movements performed both seated and standing where the shoulders and arms sway with the flow of the songs. Super Khoumeissa have found fans in Animal Collective, who invited the band to play at their ATP Festival in May this year.

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